AHL Lehigh Valley Phantoms' Mark Alt knows how to play through pain

Mark Alt is known for his toughness. He led his high school football team to a state title despite playing with a broken collarbone.

Mark Alt is known for his toughness. He led his high school football team to a state title despite playing with a broken collarbone. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO, Courtesy of JustSports)

Find out what makes Lehigh Valley Phantoms defenseman Mark Alt tick

Mark Alt never felt any different than anybody else he grew up around, but he sure was, and people took notice.

The son of John Alt, the Kansas City Chiefs Hall of Fame right tackle, a 6-foot-8 behemoth of a man, Mark Alt had some very big shoes to fill.

Instead of playing offensive line, he played quarterback.

And he was good.

So good, that the University of Iowa offered him a full scholarship to be the Hawkeyes quarterback following the end of his high school career in 2009, when he led Cretin-Derham Hall to the Minnesota High School state championship while playing with a broken collarbone.

"Mark was John's little Mini Me," Carolyn Alt, Mark's mom said during a phone interview from their home in Minnesota. "Dad is very competitive, to a fault, and that has been very hard on our kids to have such a competitive father. But Mark thrived under it. From John's eyes, he prepared him to be a football player.

At 6-foot-3, 205 pounds, Alt sure looks like a quarterback today, but he passed that up, no pun intended. He passed up a football scholarship for an ice hockey scholarship to the University of Minnesota. Today, he's in his second full season with the Phantoms and, along with Brandon Manning, forms the top defensive pair for the team, which is in its first year in the Lehigh Valley.

Mark missed 11 games this season with a shoulder injury, one that could have kept him out of the Phantoms lineup even longer, which reminded Carolyn of when Mark's team won the state high school football championship. Mark broke his collarbone in a hockey tournament that his dad didn't want him playing in because of the state football playoffs, but mom took him anyway.

The family did everything from icing to electrical stimulation to get Mark back on the football field for the championship game, and then he re-injured the collarbone in the game but continued to play in pain and led his team to victory.

His decision to play hockey instead of football allowed his family the opportunity to see him play every home game.

Carolyn remembers Mark as an exceptional student, captain of every sports team he played on, and a handy kid to have around if your snowmobile broke down or your boat broke down on a lake. She remembers Mark turning over a snowmobile in the fields to repair it, then righting it and riding home.

But there's something else that makes Mark Alt different from most hockey players, and most pro athletes as well. He was born with a bilateral cleft lip and palate. The middle part of his upper jaw and lip closed separately from the rest of his face.

Mark is one of five children, with older sister Lauren (25), younger sisters Julia (20), Jordyn (19) and younger brother Joe (11). None of them were born with a cleft, which does not run in the family.

"Maybe the cleft has a lot to do with him overcompensating to be really good at everything he does," Carolyn said.

Perhaps the most famous athlete born with a cleft palate is Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning, who helped fund the Pediatric Craniofacial Center at Peyton Manning Children's Hospital at St. Vincent in Indianapolis.

Alt, who was born in Kansas City, where his father played, was treated at Children's Hospital and Clinics of Minnesota in Minneapolis, which is closer to where the family came from and lived in the offseason.

"I was very fortunate with my family situation, with my dad being able to afford all the surgeries," Mark said. "They're extremely expensive. It was a process when I was a kid, but it turned out really well."

Neither Mark nor Carolyn can recall the exact number of surgeries that Mark had, with Carolyn estimating four and Mark seven or eight, which makes sense in a lot of ways since Mark went through the pain of recovery.

"The first one I remember is getting bone taken out of my hip to be put in the front of my mouth," he said of an operation that took place around age seven or eight. "That's the first one I remember because of the severity, and it was quite painful and I had to be bandaged up for quite a while. The mouth was the most painful. It isn't the greatest feeling."

Alt was treated by a team of doctors at the children's hospital while growing up, with team evaluations that included otolaryngologists, anthropologists and even psychologists.

Because children with cleft palates and lips appear to have some facial deformity, the awareness of the difference by other people except for the closest friends or teammates can sometimes cause emotional trauma, especially in the younger years.

Mark discovered that reality of his birth defect in elementary school, and still experiences it.

"It's not teammates," he said. "It's opponents. That has been happening since I was in second or third grade, and it still happens today. It ticks me off, but it makes me play better, harder. It ends up working against them. It's a small trigger for me and I end up playing better. When you have someone picking out something small like that, it fuels the fire."

Phantoms coach Terry Murray said he never even noticed anything different about Mark Alt other than his athletic ability.

"He's a hockey player. He's a good hockey player, a great athlete," Murray said. "We don't notice it at all. He's just an athlete. When you're talking to a player, you're looking at his eyes. You want his reaction. You want to see how the player is listening, if he is listening, what his expressions are."

Even so, Alt said because those seeds are sewn so early in life, there's always a question in the back of your mind about how others perceive you.

"I think everyone with a cleft palate or lip has a little bit of that," he said. "I grew out of that. It comes with confidence. You grow out of it by becoming comfortable with it, and the more confident you become, the less you think about it."

Alt said there's even another surgery he could get now that his facial bones are done growing to change the appearance of his upper jaw, but he considers that purely cosmetic.

"I'm comfortable with it," he said.

Part of that comfort, according to Carolyn, comes from the family's strong faith.

John and Carolyn knew Mark was going to be born with a cleft palate and lip from a Level II ultrasound done because of another concern while she was pregnant.

"We are a very spiritual family," Carolyn said. "I carried too much amniotic fluid and I felt that was God's way of giving me a head's up about Mark."

Because they knew of the condition in advance, the Alts were able to game plan. Because Mark's mouth wasn't fully formed, he needed special bottles for feeding. He was born on Oct. 18, 1991, and underwent the first of his surgeries in January 1992, and then another when he was 18 months old.

"From the time we brought him home, I thought he was born with a cleft for a special reason, and that's the way I treated him," Carolyn said. "We are very blessed and fortunate because we anticipated it to be more of a problem than it was."

Mark never had an ear infection problems or speech problems, and is missing just one tooth, which is kind of rare in the hockey world.

Mark said he'd like to start doing some outreach to cleft palate clinics and patients, but wants to get more settled into a professional hockey career before making commitments in one particular city. For now, his career is about getting better and moving up to the NHL level.

"This is his second year as a professional," Murray said. "Last year was a big adjustment for him, huge actually. As I go through the quarters, I talk to the players just to kind of check in with them, talk about roles, give them some feedback and listen to them. Alt said he played more games at that point than an entire college season.

"I think it's a very big adjustment from college to the pros, and that's something that he's really improved on as a pro, how to get ready for every game, how to live as a pro and come back and get ready the next day."

Mark Alt isn't just preparing himself for the next practice or the next game, he's preparing himself for the next level.